There is always a calm before the storm, and for Israel, this
calm is about to end. Sometime soon, sometime even sooner than
Israel's giant thinkers may anticipate, Arab terrorism will
resume, probably with a vengeance and with a ferocity unseen for
the past several years. Although this Palestinian return to
indiscriminate violence might appear inconsistent with the
ongoing "Peace Process," and even seem irrational in
view of the impending declaration of "Palestine," new
terrorist assaults upon Israel will actually represent an
altogether predictable expression of the sacred.

For Israel's enemies, violence and the sacred are always
inseparable. To understand the rationale and operation of coming
Palestinian terrorism against Israel, it is first necessary to
understand PLO/HAMAS/ISLAMIC JIHAD conceptions of the sacred.
From these pertinent conceptions it will become clear that Arab
terror against Jews is, at its heart, a manifestation of
religious worship long known as sacrifice.

Speaking to Palestinian security forces in Gaza a short time
ago, Yasser Arafat remarked: "They will fight for Allah, and
they will kill and be killed, and this is a solemn oath... Our
blood is cheap compared with the cause which has brought us
together... but shortly we will meet again in heaven...."
Central to this revealing remark is the duality of sacrificial
behavior; the fighters "will kill and be killed..."
Victory for the Palestinian people will come when both the Jews
and the Arab "martyrs" suffer death. But while death
for the Jews will be final and unheroic, a confirmation of Jewish
limitations, death for the Palestinians will be only a temporary
inconvenience on the way to immortality. What is more, it is only
by killing Jews and subsequently being killed by them that true
freedom from death can be realized.

This is the true meaning of Islamic terrorism against Israel;
it is a form of sacred violence oriented toward the sacrifice of
both enemies and martyrs. It is through the purposeful killing of
Jews, today through terrorism, tomorrow through war, that the
Palestinian embarked upon jihad can buy himself free from the
penalty of dying, of being killed himself. It is through such
killing, not through diplomacy, that God's will may be done.

Only when Israel has understood that terrorism is an activity
related to sacrifice will it be on the way to effective
counterterrorism. Until now, this is an understanding - like
other aspects of Israeli security planning - that has lent itself
to insubstantial theorizing. For the future, Palestinian
terrorism should be approached, at least in part, as a violent
and sacred act of mediation between Arab sacrificers and their
deity.

Recently Arafat said: "The Palestinian people are
prepared to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl so that the
Palestinian flag will be flown over the walls, the churches, and
the mosques of Jerusalem." Here the PLO Chairman was not
speaking of a purely political kind of sacrifice. Rather,
pointing toward death in the context of "holy war," it
is a sacrifice wherein authentic disappearance will befall only
the Jews and where "the last boy and the last girl"
will find eternal life.

For the Palestinians who now regard terrorism as sacrifice, it
is a sacred violence that rewards doubly. Killing the despised
Jew while simultaneously killing death for the Muslim,
Palestinian sacrificial terror is the altogether optimal fusion
of religion and politics. Moreover, such terror also fulfils the
timeless function of sacrifice, which is to quell violence within
the community and to prevent intracommunal conflicts from
erupting.

What lessons can be learned by Prime Minister Barak and his
security chiefs for more effective Israeli counterterrorism? One
answer emerges from a more generic investigation of sacrifice.
Looking over several thousand years of history, all sacrificial
victims are invariably distinguishable from nonsacrificeable
beings by one essential trait: between these victims and the
community a crucial social link is missing, so that they can be
sacrificed without fear of reprisal. The practice of sacred
violence via sacrifice is always one that can be undertaken
without risk of vengeance. In sacrifice, the victim, who lacks a
champion, is struck down without fear of reprisal.

Ironically, this feeling of immunity from Israeli and Jewish
vengeance now thoroughly permeates the Palestinian terrorist
community. By responding to each act of terror with
self-criticism and degrading submission, the Jewish nation of
terror victims has reinforced the PLO/HAMAS/ISLAMIC JIHAD idea
that the Arabs are engaged in genuinely sacrificial behavior.
Revolted by a stooped-over people that refuses to fight back, and
that even scrapes its own flesh and blood from sidewalk altars
without planning for punishment, these Arabs know that what they
do must be sacred.

For Israel under Barak, it is time to recognize that terrorism
and the sacred are closely linked. Before the Jewish State can
protect itself from Palestinian terrorism, its policies will have
to convince would-be attackers that Israel will not allow itself
to become a sacrifice. To accomplish this all-important goal,
these policies will have to express the certainty of vengeance
whenever Jews are slaughtered by Arab terrorists. Although such
an expression of justice would seem easy enough, it remains
inconsistent with the prevailing self-sacrifice of Israel
mandated by a huge wooden horse called "Oslo."

There is one last important observation about sacrifice and
terrorism. For the Palestinians who act upon linkage between
violence and the sacred, the strength of their sacrificial
behavior is drawn from concealment. Religion serves to shelter
the terrorists from expectations of reciprocal violence just as
their own violence against Israel seeks shelter in religion. To
the extent that Israel can persuasively demystify the sacrificial
harms of its enemies, openly de-linking these murders from
consecrating Islamic institutions, it will stand a better chance
of bringing its shielded enemies within a required circle of
Jewish vengeance and punishment. While such demystification must
lead to escalations of Israeli-Palestinian violence in the short
run, it can at least reduce the likelihood that the Jewish State
as a whole will ultimately be sacrificed upon the bloodstained
altar of Arab terror.

=========

LOUIS RENE BERES (Ph.D. Princeton, 1971) Professor ,
Department of Political Science, Purdue University is the author
of many books and articles dealing with terrorism and
counterterrorism. His work in these areas is well-known in
American and Israeli intelligence communities. Professor Beres
very recently participated in TERRORISM AND BEYOND... THE 21ST
CENTURY, an international conference in Oklahoma City
sponsored by the Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.21
April 2000